Ever wanted to put words into Martha Stewart’s mouth? Here’s your chance, courtesy of the ever-lovin’ Brunching Shuttlecocks. My entry, of course, is kinda lame:
Thanks to Cosmic Central for finding this toy. You know, if I were just a bit more clever I could probably put together my own captioning toy. Hmm.
Brunching – Talking Martha
Hi, my name is Karel. (“Hi, Karel!”) I’m a recovering chat-room addict. I used to spend hours and hours every day in chat rooms. And sometimes I saw things almost as funny as the material at QDB.
(Warning: NOT for the faint of heart or anyone easily offended. Language is often crude and blunt. Don’t blame me if you see something that tips one of your sacred cows.)
Taking a few minutes off from being one of the cleverest smartasses on the web, Master Ninja tells us a little about the concepts of “terrorism” and “war.”
Oh, did you notice how I didn’t use the word “terrorist attack” in that sentence there? Well, I did that on purpose. See, unless you have jelly for brains, you can realize that any military operation is a terrorist operation. When you’re in a war, you generally have two ways to get your point across – either you kill every one of your enemies (which occurs rarely) or you scare the living F— out of them until they surrender. Do you think the bombs we drop strategically ring our enemies’ doorbells and hide in the bushes? Do you think they have special “bad people” detectors? Do you think we have bombs that cast off the shackles of the oppressed while making their dictators think really hard about what they did wrong?
No. We – that is, America – drop bombs on people to scare the living f— out of them. We know we’re not going to eliminate all of our enemies. We also know that killing one, or three, or four hundred of the “key leaders” isn’t going to tear down the organization based on an ideal of hatred shared by many of their countrymen. What will stop any enemy is making them think, “Wait! They’ve got f—ing bombs! Big ones! I’m scared because one of those bombs might very well make me die.” Fear. Fear is a much greater weapon of war than any weapon that has ever been developed in any lab – unless they’re developing Fear Bombs, which very well might work better than Fear itself.
Better yet, go read the whole piece. Take note that it hasn’t been gently sanitized like the quoted paragraphs above. It’s damned good reading anyway.
Master Ninja – Terrorism
Yeah, I totally failed to do the Friday Five again. It was a busy day.
Now that I’ve downed a mug of steaming hot cocoa, I’m ready to take on the day’s tasks: Assemble the other two (of four) future Enco workstations in anticipation of the specialist’s arrival tomorrow morning; swap out the video card in what used to be the Entercom webmaster’s computer; make some progress on the standby server for Entercom’s future webserver; hook up the PC for a new NRK salesperson; type up plans for a proper Entercom webhosting facility.
Not necessarily in that order, but pretty close. Here’s hoping your day is a bit more fun.
With enough time, practice and effort I hope to be as clever a writer as Emily, who has this to say about defending your right not to have a God:
But what bothers me is that my total lack of religion is perceived as a blank space to be filled with some god or another. Au contraire, my not-religion is just as firm in my mind as religion is to those who follow it. I’m not so much an atheist/agnostic as someone who has no doctrine about the theological and devotes herself instead to the here and now (is that what secular humanists do? I forget). The trouble is in defending this way of life to people who wish to convert me. They see it as a lack of something necessary, while I see it as a lack of something unnecessary.
I’m going to carry that last sentence with me for the rest of my days. Thanks, Emily!
“mormons”
Not that I really wanted to get involved in this one, but reading one of the news stories on Yahoo! set my teeth to grinding. Here’s the bit of nonsense in question:
Senate Chaplain Lloyd Ogilvie joined the fray in his opening prayer on the Senate floor on Thursday, saying: “Almighty God …. We acknowledge the separation of sectarianism and state, but affirm the belief that there is no separation between God and state.”
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, thanked Ogilvie, and said: “He spoke for all of us. We are one nation under God.”
Uh, Lloyd? Tom? Last time I checked, “freedom of religion” means that I don’t have to acknowledge your God, and my government (that would be you) shouldn’t be forcing your God down my throat.
A phrase added to the Pledge half a century ago is being removed because it violates church/state separation. Cool.
Yahoo! – Lawmakers Denounce…
